NASCAR has absolute power on rules of road

LIZ CLARKE, Copyright 2001 Washington Post

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, July 15, 2001

The NASCAR Winston Cup rule book fills 73 pages and includes elaborate detail about a stock car's permissible wheelbase, engine displacement and brake components. It spells out the size and style of the numbers on the cars (21 inches high, 4 inches wide and slanted at no more than 30 degrees). But four letters -- "EIRI" -- explained in a preamble on Page 8 say more about the way stock-car racing is run than all those regulations.

The shorthand stands for "Except In Rare Instances," and its meaning is clear: NASCAR rules are strictly enforced -- except when they are not. That caveat gives NASCAR officials broad latitude to ensure that races are run the way they want without prolonged debate over what the rule book really means.

NASCAR officials also have the prerogative to modify the rules during the season if the three dozen Winston Cup races are not producing the exciting competition that fans pay to see. If Fords are routing the Chevrolets, for example, NASCAR might decide it needs to slow the Fords down by raising their spoiler height.

"That's what's bad about this sport in a lot of ways," said driver Jimmy Spencer, who was unhappy with a recent rules-tweaking. "You don't see the NFL saying, `OK, what we're going to do this month is, we're going to say a first down is 15 yards.' "

But to NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr., this flexibility is the genius behind the sport that his late father founded in 1947.

"If we see we've got a bad rule, we fix it," France said in a recent interview. "We'll fix it now. We won't wait until the next meeting. We get criticized about that, changing rules in middle of the stream. We recognize we'll take some heat, but after about a week, it quiets down."

Like his father before him, France serves as NASCAR's chief rules maker, judge and jury. Over the years, both have been accused of using that power to manipulate the rules in the interest of staging a more entertaining show. Racing legend Junior Johnson goes a step further, saying the NASCAR rules have been used on occasion to discipline drivers who buck authority. And in fact, the Frances have had a consistent policy on dissent.

But in the wake of seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt's death in a crash last February in the Daytona 500, NASCAR has faced its most public questioning. Earnhardt was the fourth driver to die in 10 months, and the deaths have subjected NASCAR's approach to safety, as well as its operating style, to unaccustomed scrutiny.

A number of NASCAR practices have been questioned in the past few months: When a driver dies on the track, it is NASCAR, rather than a law enforcement agency, that conducts the closed-door investigation. NASCAR officials impound the car for further study -- as in Earnhardt's case -- and may or may not announce a cause of the accident. NASCAR's rule book is explicit about cars (the section on carburetors fills two pages), but vague about drivers' personal safety gear -- such as helmets, fireproof suits and gloves and head-and-neck restraint devices that some believe could save drivers' lives in hard collisions. "For whatever reason, they (NASCAR) don't want to require certain things," noted biomechanical engineer John Melvin, an expert on racecar crashes. NASCAR is the only major racing series without its own medical director. Emergency medical care is the responsibility of racetracks, rather than NASCAR.

France views the current wave of scrutiny as a by-product of the times and the sport's success.

"The sport has reached the '90s and the year 2001," France said. "Our mistakes will be highlighted, and we'll be held to a higher standard. And that's good; that's fair."

Still, few drivers openly question the status quo. There is scant reason, because if NASCAR's 54-year history has proven anything it is that even the best drivers can be replaced -- the sport is bigger than its stars.

According to Johnson, a racing legend who quit the sport in 1994 after tiring of tangling with France, NASCAR not only writes the rules, but also selectively enforces them to suit its interests.

If one driver is far superior to his peers, NASCAR "has a tendency to try to penalize the car to take care of that driver," Johnson said. It's easy to do, he explained, through NASCAR's inspection process, when every racecar is weighed, measured and pored over before each qualifying session and race.

Johnson said the widespread suspicion within racing circles that the "gray areas" are sometimes used to discipline drivers is true. A driver who has been critical of NASCAR, for example, may have more trouble passing inspection than the next racer.

"It's reality," Johnson said. "The most successful people keep their mouth shut."

Asked about NASCAR's reputation for capricious enforcement of the rules, France said that "by and large" he felt the rules were administered fairly.

"At the end of the day, the rules would come back to people, and people are people," France said. "Somebody goes down the highway, gets a little fast and gets away. And someone else doesn't. I wouldn't say we were Simon Pure -- clean as a pin -- in that area. At the end of the day, what we have to maintain is the credibility of the sport. If we're too far over the line playing fun and games, we're going to lose out, and rightly so."

Few drivers went to college to prepare for another calling. Even those who did weren't groomed to expect careers as professional athletes, as many NFL and NBA players were. So despite their success behind the wheel, many are convinced they're little more than a lucky break away from a job at a service station.

Former NASCAR champion Bobby Allison is the embodiment of that attitude. Allison was just 18, barely 5-4 and 110 pounds, when team owner Carl Kiekhaefer hired him as a mechanic in 1956. He became a driver and eventually won the 1983 Winston Cup championship.

"The idea that a guy can come from a $39.19-a-week job and work, and move into a position to take a shot at the national championship, to be able to win a lot of times and race against the best in the world and come on top -- it's just been incredible for me," Allison said.

Unlike other major-league sports, NASCAR has no players associations. That is partly a remnant of the broad distrust of organized labor in the South, where stock-car racing began. And it's partly a result of Bill France Sr.'s success in foiling past attempts to organize.

Driver Curtis Turner was "Example A" in 1960. Turner saw the commercial potential of stock-car racing and wanted a heftier cut. Hoping to force France to fatten the purses, he allied himself with the Teamsters and arranged a secret meeting with the NASCAR drivers. Nearly everyone joined that day except Johnson, mindful that his sponsor, North Carolina-based Holly Farms chicken, was fending off union organizers back home.

Johnson told his sponsors about the meeting. They phoned NASCAR. And just before the start of the next race, France summoned the drivers to a pre-race meeting.

"He told them he had a form for them to sign releasing them from the union. And he said, `If you don't sign this form, don't go back and get in your cars,' " Johnson said. "And he had drivers to replace the drivers."

As Johnson recalled, everyone except Turner, Fireball Roberts and Tim Flock renounced his union membership. Roberts reconsidered, but France banned the other two "for life." (They were reinstated years later).

Throughout its history, NASCAR has been quick to respond when crashes endanger fans -- modifying engines to slow the cars, raising fences and reinforcing barriers between the cars and grandstands.

When drivers die, the sport has been slower to respond. The main reason, NASCAR officials say, is that extensive testing is necessary to make sure that well-intentioned safety improvements don't have unforeseen, negative consequences.

NASCAR officials have changed virtually nothing about the cars since Earnhardt's death. But last week, they started requiring bigger windows in the cars (which have no doors) to enable drivers to climb out more easily wearing the bulky neck restraints.

After Earnhardt's death, NASCAR officials seized his Chevrolet and took it to an undisclosed location for study. Their report on the fatal crash is likely to say that Earnhardt's seat belt failed because it was installed improperly, at the driver's insistence, and worn too loose.

"We want to make it as safe as possible," France said. "We've had three or four high-profile fellas (die) -- starting with Dale Earnhardt, Kenny Irwin and Kyle Petty's son (Adam). That doesn't stop us from moving along. Motor sports is not a tiddlywinks game. When you're running fast, you're bound to have some accidents."

Shortly after Earnhardt died, driver Todd Bodine suggested that drivers form a safety committee that would serve as a clearinghouse for ideas about potential improvements, such as energy-absorbing barriers and better restraint systems. "We, as drivers, as a community, don't have a voice, and we need to start having a voice in what happens," he said.

In an interview last month, Bodine discounted reports that he was reprimanded for his comments in a meeting with NASCAR president Mike Helton. "Everybody blew it out of proportion that we were pointing fingers and yelling," Bodine said. "And we weren't. We were discussing it."

A drivers' safety committee has yet to be formed. According to NASCAR officials, there is no need. Bodine said he now agrees.

"You don't need a committee of drivers to come to NASCAR because their doors are always open," Bodine said. "They always have been."